Influencing rural occupational therapy practice and education in the USA

Impact summary

Increasing conversation in the global occupational therapy community about the needs and injustice experienced by rural people in health outcomes and poor accessing occupational therapy services.

Research and engagement activities leading to impact

Invitation to speak with the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) Rural Community of Practice (CoP) about the results of our review and how this applied to practice.

Research outputs associated with the impact

Review article: Extension, austerity, and emergence: Themes identified from a global scoping review of non-urban occupational therapy services.

Outcomes of research leading to impact

Themes were identified in a scoping review of 117 occupational therapy research papers about rural practice. The themes suggested a tacit acceptance that rural people and places were difficult and expensive to service from normalised urban spaces using urban models, and thus rural people should compromise on quality of care.

Beneficiaries of the impact

The American Occupational Therapy Association Rural Community of Practice (CoP) members including practicing occupational therapists, academics, educators, and students from rural parts of the United States of America.

Details of the impact achieved

Therapists from the AOTA CoP met via Zoom to discuss the outcomes of our article: Extension, austerity, and emergence: Themes identified from a global scoping review of non-urban occupational therapy services. The participants had read the article prior to attending. The participants discussed how they felt when reading the paper and reported that the they felt the content reflected their experience of rural practice and they felt validated.
We discussed the similarities and differences between USA and Australian experiences of rural practice, and the importance of understanding rural practice as a separate field of practice in occupational therapy.
Participants discussed how they were going to use the research in practice, including changing student curriculum to focus more on rural experiences and to highlight the place-based work they were doing in rural spaces to policy makers to influence development of place-based models of care. A future joint Zoom meeting between the Australian Occupational Therapy Association Regional, rural and remote special interest group (which I chair), and the AOTA Rural CoP is being planned to identify opportunities to raise the voice of rural therapists within the profession.

Impact date	17 Mar 2023
Category of impact	Cultural Impact, Public policy Impact
Impact level	International